In The Papers 20 August

20-08-2008

by Sylvia Leatham

O2 ramps up debt collection | Babcock & Brown shares plunge

The Irish Times reports that Dublin broker FinanceOne has launched a website called IrishSavings.ie, which compares regular savings rates available on the market. The company launched IrishDeposits.ie earlier this year to compare lump-sum fixed-term rates. FinanceOne receives commissions on deposits and savings placed with several banks.

The Irish Independent reports that 73 companies and individuals were financially blacklisted over a five-day period in August for failing to pay their mobile phone bills, as O2 ramped up its debt collection activities. Details of the registered judgments, which were largely for sums of below EUR1,500, are contained in the latest edition of 'Stubbs Gazette'. An O2 spokeswoman said registered judgments were obtained only "as an absolute last resort". "In the case of non-payment, O2, over a prolonged period of time, makes every effort to communicate directly with these customers and where we know there is an issue with payment, together with the customer we will put in place a monthly payment plan," she said. The newspaper reported earlier that the number of registered judgments by phone companies during the first half of the year had tripled.

The paper also says that shares in Australian investment institution Babcock & Brown, which owns 8 percent of Eircom, fell a further 23.5 percent on Tuesday as investors grew increasingly concerned over the health of its listed funds and speculation mounted that embattled chief executive Phil Green was about to announce his resignation. The company also sought an immediate suspension of trading in its shares until Wednesday morning, when the board will have finalised any impending management changes.

The paper also notes that new online music video service Muzu.tv has added another 80,000 hours of content to its archives after agreeing a deal with ITN. The deal will allow the Irish company to put a host of interviews and other music-related ITN content on its website. Muzu.tv hopes to have 2 million unique users by the end of the month.

The Irish Examiner reports that recruitment agency Sigmar has said lower-skilled production jobs are being replaced by high-end specialist roles, as noted by ENN on Tuesday.

According to the Financial Times, chipmaker Intel has offered a bullish forecast for its new Atom processor for low-end 'netbooks', although executives admitted that the product could eat into sales of more profitable notebook chips. While the company did not give specific numbers at its annual developer forum in San Francisco, a chart suggested that machines based on the low-power Atom chip, which was launched this year, would account for nearly 40 percent of mobile devices powered by Intel chips in 2012, with the rest based on regular notebook processors. Dadi Perlmutter, head of mobile computing, conceded the low-priced chips could reduce sales of more profitable products. However, he added that "sometimes cannibalisation is not such a bad thing", since the low-end notebooks that were likely to be affected were more marginal products for Intel.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Hewlett-Packard has posted a 14 percent rise in quarterly profit amid robust international sales. HP reported net income of USD2.03 billion for the quarter ended 31 July, up from USD1.78 billion in the year-earlier period. Revenue was USD28.03 billion, up 10 percent from USD25.38 billion a year earlier. HP also issued an optimistic outlook for the current quarter, assuaging recent investor worries that its overseas business will be hurt by the strengthening US dollar and a possible sales slowdown in China. HP's strong results follow better-than-expected earnings from Cisco and IBM, providing further reassurance to investors that economic woes haven't hit the tech industry yet, partly because business spending has held up as firms invest in technology to help them cut costs elsewhere.

The paper also says that Salesforce.com has acquired InStranet, a maker of call-centre optimisation software, for USD31.5 million, which includes the assumption of USD4.2 million in cash. The deal, the largest ever for CRM provider Salesforce, was completed on 4 August. Salesforce's sales-automation software is increasingly popular with businesses, but its call-centre management software hasn't had the same success, according to Bruce Richardson, an analyst at AMR Research.

The same paper notes that Apple has blamed batteries from a single supplier for the meltdown of some models of its iPod Nano digital music player. The company's written statement came in response to a Japanese government report that two iPod Nanos overheated in Tokyo, scorching nearby paper and a woven straw mat. Apple said the flaw affected first-generation Nanos, sold between September 2005 and December 2006, in very rare instances. The company's statement added there "have been no reports of serious injuries or property damage, and no reports of incidents for any other iPod Nano model."

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